New Approaches to Exclusive Rights at WIPO

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Random-bits] WIPO backs Development Agenda, and new
approaches to innovation andcreativity
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 11:59:09 -0400
From: James Love <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]

Over the past two years, there has been a growing movement to
change  WIPO as an institution.  This includes growing civil
society  participation in some of the WIPO committees, the summer
2003 request  that WIPO hold a major meeting on open
collaborative efforts to create  public goods, two TACD meetings
on the WIPO Work Program and the Future  of WIPO, an August 2004
proposal by Argentina and Brazil to change the  WIPO charter and
adopt a new work program and development agenda, and  the recent
Geneva Declaration on the Future of WIPO.
(see http://www.cptech.org/ip/wipo/genevadeclaration.html)

Today the WIPO General Assembly dramatically decided to advance
the  proposed "Development Agenda" for WIPO.  As evidenced by the
document  setting out the proposal (WO/GA/31/11), and the debate,
the "Development  Agenda" is really two things.  (1) a focus on
the development aspects of  intellectual property policy, and (2)
a frontal challenge to the "more  is better" approach to IP
policies.  One element of the “Development  Agenda” is a new
Treaty on Access to Knowledge and Technology.  There  are many
other important elements.

I would like to thank everyone who played an important role in
the  events that have caused a historic change in the WIPO
culture and work  program.  Below are two documents.  Today’s
WIPO Decision on Agenda item  12 (the Development Agenda), and a
note sent to WIPO from the Civil  Society Coalition regarding the
proposed Treaty on Access to Knowledge  and Technology.

     Jamie Love <[email protected]>

--------------------------

Agenda Item 12


Following discussions, the General Assembly adopts the following
decision:

Recalling that the relationship between development and
intellectual property has continuously been raised in several
multilateral fora; Taking into account the activities carried out
by WIPO in the area of development;

Bearing in mind the internationally agreed development goals,
including those in the United Nations Millennium Declaration, the
Programme of Action for the Least Developed Countries for the
Decade 2001-2010, the Monterey Consensus, the Johannesburg
Declaration on Sustainable Development, the Declaration of
Principles and the Plan of Action of the first phase of the World
Summit on the Information Society and the Sao Paulo Consensus
adopted at UNCTAD XI;

(1) The General Assembly welcomes the initiative for a
development  agenda and notes the proposals contained in document
WO/GA/31/11.

(2) The General Assembly decides to convene inter-sessional 
intergovernmental meetings to examine the proposals contained in 
document WO/GA/31/11, as well as additional proposals of Member
States.  To the extent possible, the meetings will be convened in
conjunction  with the 2005 session of the Permanent Committee on
Cooperation for  Development Related to Intellectual Property.
The meetings, open to all  Member States, will prepare a report
by July 30, 2005, for the  consideration of the next General
Assembly. WIPO-accredited IGOs and  NGOs are invited to
participate as observers in the meetings.

(3) The International Bureau shall undertake immediate
arrangements in  order to organize with other relevant
multilateral organizations,  including UNCTAD, WHO and UNIDO,
WTO, a joint international seminar on  Intellectual Property and
Development, open to the participation of all  stakeholders,
including NGOs, civil society and academia.

(4) The General Assembly decides to include this issue in its
September  2005 session.

--------

CSC statement-

The Civil Society Coalition (CSC) represents twenty-six
non-government  organizations from twelve countries, North and
South.  Our members are  concerned with a wide range of issues
that are relevant to WIPO,  including access to medicine, access
to knowledge, and better mechanisms  to support creativity
activity.  We thank WIPO for supporting our  application for
permanent NGO accreditation.  We look forward to  contributing to
the debate over the development agenda for WIPO, and in 
particular, the proposed Treaty on Access to Knowledge and
Technology.  We suggest this Treaty include provisions on topics
such as the following:

1.	Implementation of Articles 4, 5, 6 and 7 of the Doha
Declaration on  TRIPS and Public Health,

2.	Implementation of Articles 7,8 and 40 of the TRIPS regarding
the  control of anticompetitive practices and the transfer of
technology

3.	Global access to publicly funded research,

4.	Mechanisms to promote openness, including support for new open
access    scholarly publishing models, open standards for
software and Internet  development, open databases, and other
instruments of disseminating and  transferring knowledge and
technology, and other approaches that remove  barriers to
innovation, and support and empower collaborative approaches  to
innovation and creativity,

5.	Minimum exceptions to patent and copyright laws which are
needed to  protect the visually impaired, libraries, educators,
consumers, and  Internet technologies, and which facilitate
follow-on creative  activities and innovation by authors,
performers, researchers and  inventors, working both as
individuals and within creative communities,

6.	Provisions in the Patent Cooperation Treaty to protect
standards  making organizations, and to better enable
collaborative efforts to  create public goods, such as databases
or standards that will be free of  patent claims.

7.	Mechanisms, such as those found in the Treaty of Europe, to
promote  technology transfer and scientific collaboration between
richer and  lesser developed member states,

We note also there are important topics such as the
misappropriation of  social and public goods, both modern and
traditional, concentrated  ownership and control of knowledge,
technology and biological resources,  and unfair treatment of
authors, inventors and other creative persons  and communities,
and new trade frameworks to support research and  development
that should be discussed.

-- 

James Love | Consumer Project on Technology
http://www.cptech.org | mailto:[email protected]
P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 200036
voice +1.202.387.8030 | fax +1.202.234.5176
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